The Off Topic Topic

[Josquius]

I assume that's a king of Gondor in the center, based on the robe?

Also I just noticed Darth Sidious in the painting (far right, centerish).

it's Satan with his minions - Hollywood, the news media, a lawyer, a biology teacher with Darwin's Origin of Species, and a pregnant woman.

Pregnant women.... The worst of all.

[Syt]

Pregnant single women.... The worst of all.

FYP

[Josquius]

The Simpsons totally called brexit

[Syt]

The co-founder of the Austrian chapter of the Identitarian Movement:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E89kAS9X0AErV18?format=jpg&name=small

"The victory of the #Taliban in #Afghanistan is a sounding defeat for #Globalism. Drag queens, homo parades and human rights ideology are on shutdown. It's time that #Europe, too, liberates itself from its status of being an American colony."

[Eddie Teach]

The judge is probably a Supreme Court Judge. Scattered in front of him are several Supreme Court decisions. Also, does the guy to the right of what's supposed to be Reagan look like Stephen Miller?

Is Miller a cosplayer?

[Valmy]

The co-founder of the Austrian chapter of the Identitarian Movement:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E89kAS9X0AErV18?format=jpg&name=small

"The victory of the #Taliban in #Afghanistan is a sounding defeat for #Globalism. Drag queens, homo parades and human rights ideology are on shutdown. It's time that #Europe, too, liberates itself from its status of being an American colony."

Man so we are famous for not persecuting drag queens, homosexuals and respecting human rights? I am flattered.

[celedhring]

Do we have a generic Euro politics thread? I forget...

Anyway, this was commissioned by Tusk's party (KO) and the elections are still 2 years away, so grains of salt are in order, but...



Seems the strife around the new Polish media ownership law (which limits non-EU ownership to 49% - the main opposition media network is American-owned) has hurt PiS.

(We have had the exact same regulation in Spain since forever, fwiw)

[Sheilbh]

Ironically that's normally seen as a leftie position here given the outsized influence of Murdoch in our media - one suggestion that always does the rounds is that the owner of UK based media organisation should pay taxes in the UK (which would, I think cover the Guardian, Mirror Group, Lebedev's stable of papers, the Mail and the Express; but not the Times, Sun or Telegraph).

Looking at that it doesn't seem that Tusk has had much impact since his comeback

PL2050 might or might not be durable. My understanding is they very much rely on the popularity of their leader/founder who is a journalist/TV presenter (I think he used to host Poland's Got Talent) - I think he's rinning on ending Polish polarisation with an emphasis on secular government and environmentalism. I could be wrong but they look like a fairly standard centrist-y, media personality/billionaire populist party that you get in CEE a fair bit. Probably not a million miles from Zelenskiy or any of the various examples in Czechia. It feels like they'd probably fit best with Tusk's opposition coalition, but may just play kingmaker. And as you say still two years away and I think that's the type of party that can froth up and then disappear.

[The Minsky Moment]

Seems the strife around the new Polish media ownership law (which limits non-EU ownership to 49% - the main opposition media network is American-owned) has hurt PiS.

It's been interesting to watch it play out.
What has distinguished PiS from other right-authoritarian parties in the region is its implacable opposition to Putin's Russia (and relatedly) its pro-US foreign policy stance.

So there is a certain logic to passing measures against Russian media influence and I believe that is how they attempted to message the law.  But the main effect of this law was to target Discovery, a US media group, thus exposing that this is just a pure play to silence dissent.

[celedhring]

The largest media group in Spain is Mediaset, which is Italian-owned (by Silvio Berlusconi no less). But the only thing they oppose is good taste.

[Sheilbh]

It's been interesting to watch it play out.
What has distinguished PiS from other right-authoritarian parties in the region is its implacable opposition to Putin's Russia (and relatedly) its pro-US foreign policy stance.

Also they've now lost their majority - even though they won that vote - and I wonder if another difference that might emerge is that Poland has PR and that will place a limit on what PiS can do compared to Orban in Hungary which has a really majoritarian voting system.

[Syt]

East German border guards chatting to West German kids at a gap in the Berlin Wall, November 1989:



I feel this would make for a neat diorama.

[Josquius]

I'm somewhat reminded of that famous scene from It.

[Eddie Teach]

The sewer?

[Josquius]

The sewer?

Obviously I'm being silly. But it does seem like the kind of thing paranoid parents would warn their kids about and if they should put a finger over the line then they're nabbed for the east.